Saturday, October 31, 2015

Horrible UK End-of-Life Care Pushes Assisted Suicide

By Wesley J. Smith

Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

A Netherlander death doctor once notoriously said he had little need for palliative care because he had euthanasia.
Negligence and lousy medicine can also push desperate people into assisted suicide rather than face awful conditions.
That is apparently what is happening in the UK, as horrible
end-of-life care pushes people to accept assisted suicide over
abandonment and being allowed to die in pain.From the Telegraph story by John Bingham:

“Shocking” standards of
end-of-life care in the NHS are fueling support for the legalisation of
assisted dying, the chairman of an inquiry by MPs into palliative care
in the UK has warned.

Bernard Jenkin chairman of the
Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said a
fear of “finishing up on some hospital trolley, dying in some forgotten
corner” was helping drive support among the public for a change in the
law.

The committee is calling for an
urgent overhaul of training and the working culture in hospitals to
address “systemic” failings in caring for people in the final days and
hours of their lives.

This is a lesson of the dangers of the growing “quality of life”
ethic in medicine and centralized, bureaucratic control over the
delivery of health care, coming our way with Obamacare.
But assisted suicide is not the solution. It is, instead, a surrender
that will make such negligent and indifferent care more difficult to
remedy.
But boy, what a vote of no confidence that many Brits suicide as
preferable to receiving end-of-life care in the NHS [National Health
Service].Editor’s note. This appears on Wesley’s great blog. Source: NRLC News

Ireland’s Life-Saving Pro-Life Ethos

By Dave Andrusko

Tens
of thousands gathered at the National Vigil For Life in Merrion Square,
Dublin, to stand against the introduction of abortion legislation in
Ireland in 2013. (Pro Life Campaign)

I can’t imagine how it got by the censors, but Cora Sherlock, deputy
chairperson of the Irish Pro Life Campaign, managed to get an op-ed published in the European edition of Newsweek.
No doubt she got her 15 minutes because of the full-bore pro-abortion assault on Ireland, about which NRL News Today has reported many times. The beachhead for such groups as Amnesty International [!] is Ireland’s Eighth Amendment.
They believe that if they can “Repeal the eighth,” everything else
will fall. “The 8th Amendment (Article 40.3.3.) to the Irish
Constitution is the original Life Equality Amendment,” Sherlock writes.
“It protects the equal right to life of unborn children and their
mothers.”
What I particularly like about her op-ed is that Sherlock, who is
extremely articulate, simply demolishes the foundations–aka myths –that
undergird the attack.
For example, that you look hard enough you will find a right to abortion under human rights laws. Sherlock writes

This is untrue, and the fact that
this argument is proposed by groups like Amnesty International in their
campaign in favor of abortion is surprising. There is no such thing as a
right to abortion in international human rights law. (There is a right
to life; it is acknowledged in Article 3 of the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, something proponents of abortion
conveniently ignore.)

Then there is the snobbery argument, which we pro-life Americans are only too well aware of.
The second claim involves an attempt to portray Ireland as some kind
of international backwater due to its concern to protect innocent human
life. But Ireland is a progressive, young and extremely well-educated
country.
More to the point, it’s not like the people of Ireland are storming
the barricades of the Eighth Amendment to tear it down. Sherlock
observes

Far from being embarrassed by our
pro-life Constitution, Irish people embrace it. Abortion campaigners
know this. Recently, a leading pro-choice politician (and Government
Minister), Aodhan O’Riordan, admitted as much when he said that if a
referendum were to be held on repealing the 8th Amendment it would
almost certainly be defeated.

And then there’s this:

Perhaps it is the final claim,
however, which is the most damaging—the continual insistence that
Ireland’s protection of unborn humans jeopardizes the lives and health
of Irish women. This erroneous claim has the effect of making people
think Ireland is an unsafe place to be pregnant. The truth of the matter
is that Ireland is a country that has consistently ranked among the
safest in the world for pregnant women. We have a lower maternal
mortality rate than a whole host of countries with liberal abortion
regimes.

Three strikes and you’re out. Well, it ought to be, but pro-abortionists never rest.
Final thought. Employing their most earnest face, pro-abortionists
will always, always, always tell you if you just open the door a little
bit–if you “reform” the laws or wipe out constitutional
protections–there’ll be some changes here and there but nothing drastic.

Which make Sherlock’s most devastating rebuttal when she answers her
own question: “Would Ireland be a kinder, more compassionate society if
we repealed the 8th Amendment? Not if we go by the experience of other
countries where human life at its earliest stage is deemed less than
worthless.”
She lays out chapter and verse what follows as night follows day;
PPFA types scavenging the bodies of aborted baby in search of the unholy
grail–intact baby body parts; sex-selection abortions–gendercide;
search and destroy missions where 60%to 90%+ of all babies prenatally
diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted; and the ghastly, hideous
dichotomy where one premature baby will receive aggressive medical
intervention while another unborn baby of the same age at the same
hospital down the hall will be aborted.

Sherlock’s conclusion is masterful:

Every society can do better for
women and families facing unplanned or difficult pregnancies, and
Ireland is no different in this regard. But the radical discrimination
that lies at the heart of abortion serves no one. The 8th Amendment, the
original life equality amendment, has shaped Ireland into a truly
life-affirming society where no one group of human beings has the right
to determine that others are “less human.”

We Remember. And We Look Ahead with Expectation

“Hope,”
Hope, a fitting name for a girl whose brother was rescued from abortion
by Options for Life, gave $2.38 for the center’s new location. She’s
writing Matt. 19:14 – “Let the children come to me” during the remodel.
Photo Courtesy: Options for Life

This week The Center for Medical Progress released another video,
depicting Planned Parenthood’s vicious disregard for human life. Still,
Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million American tax dollars
each year. Many in our Congress and our current administration look at
Planned Parenthood and say, “Keep up the good work.”

When I think of those dollars going to Planned Parenthood as many of
our pregnancy help organizations struggle financially, it is tempting to
become discouraged.
We are given a choice, however. We can choose to focus on what we can
easily see, and become more discouraged, certainly. Right now, we see
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, keeping their federal
dollars and pushing forward with no accountability.
Or, we can choose another path. We can search more deeply, seeking to
find God’s hand at work. This is not the easy choice, because at times
God’s handiwork is more difficult to find. Yet when God’s hand works, it
is more powerful, more lasting, and in the end, more amazing.

For me, a case in point came in a recent visit to Options for Life in
New Braunfels, Texas; a suburb of San Antonio. As I walked into the
center, I was overwhelmed by what I saw. More than 6,000 square feet of
brand new office space along with furniture and special touches that
would make an interior decorator take a deep breath and say, “Wow.”

On one side of the center, a resource center looking like the
classiest children’s boutique store one could find. On the other,
medical office space that would make a plastic surgeon smile.
I’m not a property brother from the HGTV series, but I do know “stunning” when I see it. Bingo. Right here.
If this facility is missing something, I can’t tell you what it is.
Stay with me. If you are involved in a pregnancy help ministry and thinking, “That’s great but I wish we . . .”

I get it. And don’t ask me to explain why I saw this at Options and
we’re not seeing this everywhere. I will say however, that these offices
are popping up more and more across the country. I’ve been to several.

But I do know this: God is on the move. The stories of his hand at work are not just growing, they are multiplying.

At Options, CEO Beverly Ewald and board members shared with me story
after story; stories that remind me of Joshua’s “stones of remembrance.”
Remember the story in Joshua 4? God told Joshua to choose a man from
each of the 12 tribes of Israel and to have each of them carry a stone
across the Jordan as the Israelites entered the Promised Land. The
Jordan is held back for the crossing and the stones are placed on the
other side.
These stones were to be a reminder to the people that whatever the
future might hold, they were to remember that it was God who parted the
Red Sea, it was God who dried up the Jordan and that all the people
would never forget the powerful hand of God.

The family at Options has its stones of remembrance, too.

They have the story of the land they thought would be perfect for
them. Yet when they called to make an offer, another contract was in the
works. All that was left was for the buyer to drop off some earnest
money at the real estate office. But somehow, the buyer never showed up.
The land was once again for sale and they bought it. One stone.

Or their ground-breaking on the new property. At the ceremony, a
young girl and her father showed up—unknown to all. The father explained
that this little girl’s brother was saved from abortion through
Options. The little girl thanked them for saving her brother, offering a
baby bottle of change with $2.38 inside. Another stone, in place.

A bank donates office furniture from a branch it was closing. The furniture is flawless.
A medical filing system, set on rails to save precious space—worth thousands of dollars—is donated.
More furniture, for the lobby and various client rooms, is offered at
cost. As one who once sold office furniture, I know how big this gift
can be. Most furniture is bought by the retailer at discounts such as
“50/20.” This means that a couch retailing for $2,000 is priced at $800
for the retail store (50 percent off $2,000, then another 20 percent off
the $1,000 remainder). Options is paying less than half of retail price
then, to complete its décor. More stones.
A gift, anonymous, of four dollars. With it, a letter. The giver
writes that she has little to give, yet she wants to help. “My prayer is
that God will multiply this 100 times over,” reads the note. Later that
day, a representative from the center is approached by a supporter. The
supporter gives not $400 but . . . $4,000. Not 100 times the original
gift, but one thousand times the $4 gift. The stones pile up, all of
them worth remembering.

There were more stories. Many more. I can’t recall all of them.
My friends at Options don’t claim to be perfect or that they have
some kind of “special” faith. They do however, have vision and the
ability to remember the many times God performed the amazing in front of
their eyes.

Theirs is a lesson for me and for all of us. We need to remember what
God has done for us in the past. Each of our organizations must have
its own “Stones of Remembrance,” where we remind ourselves of what God
has already done.

When we do this, our discouragement dissipates and our expectation level rises.
I can’t say for sure what the future is for Planned Parenthood. My
suspicion is however, that the abortion giant is wobbling, and needs to
be prepared for a big fall.

As for us, I choose to remember. And as I remember, I can more
clearly see a mighty work unfolding in front of our eyes. New Braunfels,
Texas is just one of many examples.
Planned Parenthood may have a few tax dollars in its pocket today, but they have no idea what they are up against.
God is lifting his hand, moving once again. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Family of Jahi McMath, declared brain-dead two years ago, says “You can see she is still alive and just as beautiful as ever”

By Dave AndruskoIt
seems almost impossible that the time has flown by this quickly, but
it’s been nearly two years since Jahi McMath suffered a cardiac arrest
following routine surgery and was soon after declared brain-dead.
Last Saturday the “brain dead” girl’s family celebrated her 15th birthday at her bedside at a New Jersey hospital and posted a series of pictures on her Facebook page.
In a video, posted on Facebook, Jahi responds to a request from her mother, Nailah Winkfield, by moving her foot.

The Daily Mail adds, “In the another clip, her mother asks her to move her arm, and the girl’s hand grips an object before relaxing.”

Following December 9, 2013, surgery to remove her tonsils, adenoids,
and extra sinus tissue to treat pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, Jahi
went into cardiac arrest. Three days later she was diagnosed as
brain-dead and a titanic legal battle began in earnest when UCSF Benioff
Children’s Hospital in Oakland sought to remove Jahi from a ventilator
over the family’s vigorous objections.
Following a series of court hearings, during which the hospital never
backed down from its insistence that “This is a deceased young woman,” a
deal was brokered during a hearing before Alameda Superior Court Judge
Evelio Grillo. It allowed Ms. Winkfield to remove her daughter from the
hospital as long as she assumed “full responsibility.”

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has followed Jahi’s case closely and NRL News Today has reposted his posts. Probably the most significant fact to date is that “her body has apparently not deteriorated as generally occurs in a brain death situation,” as Wesley wrote last week.
However it is not Jahi’s family alone that believes she is not
brain-dead. “Declarations from respected physicians have concluded she exhibits neurological functions that are inconsistent with a deceased person,” Wesley wrote.
Then, just this month, a court in California permitted Ms. Winkfield
to present evidence that Jahi ”has standing” to bring a lawsuit. Wesley,
who is a lawyer, put that into layman’s language:

What does that mean? A dead person does not have standing to sue.

In other words, the court opened
the door for the presentation of evidence that Jahi McMath is not dead,
that is, her current condition does not meet the clinical criteria for a
declaration of brain death.

Reducing unborn babies to medical waste: how the pro-abortion mind works

By Dave AndruskoThis is the last NRL News Today post for the week and let me give you a heads-up: it concerns a piece that ran on a prominent pro-abortion website, Rhealitycheck.org.
The irony is that “The Day I Learned Aborted Fetuses Aren’t People”
bears no relationship to [rh]reality. None, at least not the reality
that 99% of us occupy.
You may find an occasional syllable in Amy Littlefield’s piece that
tangentially bumps into how almost all of us understand our lives but
that is purely by accident.
So what was the day like when Littlefield discovered that “aborted fetuses aren’t people”?
We learn that “in my former work,” Littlefield worked as an abortion
clinic counselor. “I often avoided seeing what we called the products of
conception—the tissue that results from the union of egg and sperm,”
she tells us.
To be clear, this is not because that might gross her out but because
(a)“For me, the embryo—or fetus, in later stages of pregnancy—was
irrelevant,” and (b) “I wanted to focus all of my attention on my
patients.”
Later she elaborates:

Still, in the clinics where I
worked, I tended to avoid seeing the medical waste. I avoided it because
it was irrelevant to my work. But I think part of me also avoided it
because I thought seeing fetal tissue might diminish my allegiance to my
patients

Oh,
you mean you feared you might feel a tinge of compassion for the child
whose body has just been torn apart? Nah, not a chance.
So, you’re probably wondering what I was wondering when I got to the
last three paragraphs of her essay: how again did you figure out
(“learn”) that “aborted fetuses aren’t people”? Here it is:

Yet even as I took part in
hundreds of abortions as a counselor, I think on some level, I still
wondered if seeing second-trimester fetal tissue could shake my
pro-choice views. Then one day, I was offered the unusual opportunity to
see the fetus of a patient who had been close to 22 weeks pregnant.
With some trepidation, I accepted. I looked. And in that moment, my
pro-choice position crystallized.

While it was shaped like a baby,
what I was looking at was not a person. It was a fetus. A fetus my
patient had chosen not to make into a baby. I felt no attachment to it.
Relieved, I stepped into the recovery room to check on my patient. Years
later, looking back on this moment, it’s still the patient I think
about, not the fetus.

Her life was what mattered.

I honestly don’t know exactly how to respond. The “fetus” wasn’t a
“baby” because the “patient” (the mother) had “chosen not to make
[“it”–the baby] into a baby.”
What if the patient decided the fetus-not-made-into-a-baby was an
orangutan? What if she decided the beating heart was a miniature
Interstate battery?
What if she looked at her baby (whoops, fetus), now close to a foot long , and decided it was a ruler?
Sure the “fetus” may have been “shaped like a baby,” but maybe it was a spaghetti squash. Both weigh about 1 pound.
I guess Littlefield reasons (to use the term in its loosest possible
fashion) that because the patient hadn’t given the fetus the go ahead to
become a baby, she could also feel unattached as well.
Her attention, even now, is on the woman and thus (well, sort of
thus) the aborted fetus was not a “person.” It was medical waste which
you can incinerate or pass along to “tissue procurement companies” who
can peddle intact baby parts to the lovely folks who experiment on fetal
lungs and hearts and livers and brains for a living.
Indeed, had the patient so wanted, Littlefield’s colleagues could
have induced a premature delivery so the patient could bond with the
baby who would die either in delivery or from non-attention after her
birth.
Why not? After all. for Littlefield , all that mattered was the patient.
I have no conclusion except this. Nothing can shake the ”pro-choice views” of people like Littlefield.
Which makes them very, very scary and very, very dangerous people.

Editor’s note. Reports surfaced Thursday that the
government will allow married Chinese couples will be allowed not one,
but two children. The following comes from the office of pro-life
champion Chris Smith (R-NJ)

WASHINGTON, DC – “Even if the new policy allows couples to have two
children—a claim that remains to be seen—the coercive population control
policy is essentially unchanged,” said Rep. Chris Smith, a leading
expert on US-China relations in the House of Representatives. “Children
will continue to be killed if unauthorized by the government and huge
fines imposed—the so-called social compensation fee—on families who
evade detection and have so-called illegal children.”
Smith said, “China’s population control program is the most brutal, hated, and disastrous anti-woman, anti-child policy ever.
“Both the old and ‘new’ policies implement forced abortions,
involuntary sterilizations and huge fines. These coercive methods result
in a gender imbalance favoring males that drives human trafficking
problems region-wide,” added Smith, who serves as the Chairman of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “It remains highly
restrictive because it still limits the size of Chinese families, which
means it will be enforced coercively.

“The new policy also needs to be thoroughly vetted for dishonesty,”
Smith said. “The Chinese government lies about its human rights record.
In 2013 it claimed an end to the horrific ‘Reform Through Labor’ system
of detention. But we know now that system has continued under different
names.”

Congressman Smith has been a vocal critic of the policy since 1983
and has held 55 hearings on human rights in China and led several
fact-finding trips to the communist country. In April, 2015 he chaired a
hearing to discuss the disastrous economic, security, and demographic
consequences of China’s population control policies (April 30, 2015 CECC
hearing).

In a speech given last year on the 34th anniversary of the “one-child
policy,” Congressman Smith called it “state-sponsored violence” and
said that “forced abortion is a crime against humanity—nothing in human
history compares to the magnitude of China’s…assault on women and
girls.” Academics and demographic experts have come to similar
conclusions about the policy, Wang Feng, the former director of the
Brookings-Tsinghua Center, said that “history will judge the “One-Child
Policy” as worse than the Cultural Revolution [as it] will influence
more than one generation.”
The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)
chaired by Smith and co-chaired by Senator Marco Rubio recently released
its 2015 Annual Report which shows that Chinese provincial governments
continued to coercively enforce birth restrictions and monitor family
size. The report also showed that population control policies created a
sex ratio imbalance resulting in the birth of significantly more males,
millions of whom will be unable to find wives. The severe imbalance
drives regional human trafficking throughout Asia for the purposes of
forced marriage and sexual exploitation. The CECC Annual Report can be
found at www.cecc.gov.

The CECC consists of nine bi-partisan Senators, eight bi-partisan
Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration
officials appointed by the President. The Annual Report was approved
unanimously by all of the CECC’s members.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

A new journal article from Bioethics, “On the Moral
Acceptability of Physician‐Assisted Dying for Non‐Autonomous Psychiatric
Patients,” author Jukka Varelius openly makes the case that assisting
suicide should be expanded to those who suffer from any kind of mental
distress – even those who never request it,

Given that the distress a
psychiatric patient undergoes can be very severe and that there may not
always be adequate means of alleviating it (short of ending the
patient’s life), the idea that psychiatric-assisted dying could
sometimes be morally acceptable does merit attention. Yet it would seem
that the suffering experienced by psychiatric patients who lack autonomy
can be as bad as the distress that autonomous, or rational, psychiatric
patients undergo, if not worse. Accordingly, it can be asked why
physician-assisted dying should be limited to the cases of autonomous or
rational patients, if it is endorsed in psychiatry. [internal citations omitted]

While this argument might seem shocking, particularly to those lives
that have been touched by suicide and mental illness, it is what our
near neighbors in Canada have just legalized, and it is exactly what the
endgame is for the nation’s leading euthanasia promotion organization,
Compassion and Choices (C&C).

C &C, formerly the Hemlock Society, is responsible for the
promotion of dangerous laws to permit state sanctioned suicide. Upon the
heels of a major euthanasia victory in California, it will no doubt use
the newly enacted assisting suicide law to motivate death advocates and
influence legislators.
While over 25 states did not advance legislation this year, we can be
sure stronger efforts will be made in the next legislative session.

As part of a calculated effort believing that Americans are not yet
ready for widespread euthanasia, C&C currently promotes carving out
state laws that allow doctors to write lethal prescriptions to patients
who request one so long as some illusory “safeguards” are followed. This
kind of assisting suicide is legal in 4 states, California, Oregon,
Washington and Vermont.* In the two states living under this law the
longest, Oregon and Washington, provide evidence that safeguards are not
working is mounting.

There are state-issued reports that provide evidence of
non-terminally ill persons receiving lethal prescriptions. Further,
there is nothing in existing law in any state that
requires doctors to refer patients for evaluation by a psychologist or
psychiatrist to screen for depression or mental illness. There is also no such requirement in any current proposal in any state.
The doctors can make a referral, but nearly never do. In fact,
according to the Oregon’s official state reports, in 17 years of
legalized doctor-prescribe suicide, a mere 5.5% of death candidates have
been referred for psychological evaluation.
In short, there is evidence that no so-called “safeguards” work. What
is worse, this is exactly what C&C President Barbara Coombs Lee
wants. She would prefer to expand the list of those who can receive
lethal drugs to any kind of discomfort a person might believe she or he
is suffering from.
In the USA Today article, “Half of U.S. states consider
right-to-die legislation,” Coombs Lee told reporter Malak Monir, “It’s
not as simple as pain. Everyone gets to identify their own definition of suffering.” (emphasis added)
In another telling remark, Coombs Lee congratulated our close
neighbors in Canada on its astounding Supreme Court decision that allows
euthanasia for virtually any reason, and possibly for people whose
wishes are unknown. In a press release she wrote, “We are heartened, as
availability of aid in dying in Canada will have an impact here,
especially in border states like New York and Maine.”
The situation in Canada is bleak. On February 6, 2015, the Supreme
Court of Canada unanimously found a constitutional right to “termination
of life” for anyone who has an “irremediable medical condition” and
wants to die.
Unlike doctor-prescribed suicide laws in California, Oregon,
Washington, and Vermont that theoretically are limited to those with
terminal illness, the sweeping ruling allows killing any Canadian who
“has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an
illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is
intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her
condition.”

So while you might not live in either Canada, or in one of the states
where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal, if more states join the ranks
of California, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont, — and above all if 2016
sees the election of a president and Senate likely to use the next
Supreme Court vacancy to nominate and confirm a Justice sympathetic to
euthanasia–there is the real risk that in the future the U.S. Supreme
Court might well follow Canada’s in holding there is a federal
Constitutional right to assist suicide.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called assisting suicide “an appropriate right to have.”
If the Court were to follow Canada’s example, such a ruling might
not, even nominally, apply the right only to the “terminally ill.”
Instead it could include anyone who “has a grievous and irremediable
medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that
causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual.”**
Indeed, as in Canada and as argued in the journal Bioethics,
the same opinion might suggest that “surrogates” can direct the killing
of children with disabilities, those with mental illness, or older
people with Alzheimer’s who have never asked to die but are deemed
incompetent to decide for themselves.

No one should suppose that the death advocates will stop with
voluntary or even non-voluntary euthanasia. Involuntary euthanasia is an
ultimate goal. In a book published in 1998, Derek Humphry, the founder
of the Hemlock Society (a predecessor of Compassion and Choices), wrote
supportively of the use of assisting suicide as “one measure of cost
containment.”

“[T]he elderly,” he wrote, are “putting a strain on the health care
system that will only increase and cannot be sustained.” Speaking of
people with disabilities, Humphry wrote, “People with chronic conditions
account for a disproportionately large share of health care use, both
services and supplies.”
He wrote of recognizing a “duty to die” and invoked the precedent of
hospital ethics committees that, then as now, routinely deny life-saving
medical treatment, and even assisted feeding, against the will of
patients and their surrogates. Other death advocates have made similar
predictions of the need to require that the burdensome with a low
quality of life be given lethal prescriptions against their will.
It would be foolish to understate the magnitude of the impact of
California’s decision. But it may be hoped that the gravity of this
defeat will shock and energize those who recognize that you don’t solve
problems by killing those to whom the problems happen.

Instead it may cause us to redouble our efforts to block further
expansion of the culture of death and, above all, to prevent the
election of a president and senators who will use every available
opportunity to entrench it irreversibly.
*Assisting suicide may have some legal immunity in the state of Montana, due to a state Supreme Court decision.

** “Irremediable,” the Canadian Supreme Court stressed, “does not
require the patient to undertake treatments that are not acceptable to
the individual.” Thus, as in the Netherlands, a depressed patient who
rejects treatment for the depression has a “right” to be killed.

The Unasked Question during the Democratic Debate: “Is there an abortion you would not allow?”

By Karen Cross, National Right to Life Political DirectorEditor’s note. This appears in the October digital edition of National Right to Life News at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsOct2015.pdf.
The story has been changed to reflect that since it first ran, former
Virginia Senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln
Chafee have dropped out.In
a nutshell, while the recent Democratic debate was rather boring, I
watched on the chance that the biased, pro-abortion media who panders to
candidates on the left would ask a challenging question, exposing the
extreme position of each of the Democratic presidential candidates on
abortion.
It didn’t happen. The word “abortion” never left the lips of CNN
moderator Anderson Cooper nor the five Democratic presidential
candidates.

In light of the recent undercover videos exposing Planned
Parenthood’s complete and utter disregard for the lives of preborn
babies in which the sale of their body parts was discussed over dinner,
Republican presidential candidates were grilled about their abortion
positions. But even when they weren’t asked specifically, they brought
up their support for life.
Because the abortion question was not asked during the Democratic debate, we must look at past records and statements .
Following is an overview of the abortion positions of the current
Democratic presidential candidates who participated in the October 13
debate (in alphabetical order).Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

As a U.S. senator, Hillary Clinton maintained a 0% pro-life record, voting against the pro-life position on every vote.
In 2003, Clinton voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act,
and voted to endorse Roe v. Wade, which allows abortion for any reason.
When the U.S. House passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection
Act on May 13, 2015, Clinton issued a statement opposing the bill,
referring to it as part of a “dangerous” trend.
In 2009, Clinton was awarded Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award.
Clinton, following the revelation of the undercover videos, reiterated her support for Planned Parenthood. She remarked:

“I think it is regrettable that
Republicans are once again trying to undermine, even end those services
that so many women have needed and taken advantage of. I think that it’s
another effort by the Republicans to try to limit the health care
options of women and we should not let them succeed once again.”

Here are 10 times so far in the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton has showed her extremism on abortion.Former Governor Martin O’Malley
O’Malley supports the current policy of abortion on demand, which allows abortion for any reason.
In April 2014, O’Malley received Planned Parenthood of Maryland’s
Betty Tyler Award “for advancing reproductive rights in Maryland.”
In July, while admitting he had not seen the videos, O’Malley dismissed them, saying:

“… I don’t generally make a habit of responding to right-wing videos.”

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

Sanders (I-Vt.) has maintained a solid pro-abortion voting record,
voting against the pro-life position more than 100 times in his federal
legislative career (U.S. House of Representatives 1991-2007, U.S. Senate
2007 to date).

Sanders voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban every
opportunity he had. More recently, Sanders voted against advancing H.R.
36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
Sanders voted against S. 1881, the bill to ban federal funding of
Planned Parenthood. His vote would allow federal funding of the abortion
giant to continue.
Sanders admitted he had not seen the video, but had read accounts of
it in the news. Referring to Planned Parenthood’s president, he said:

“Obviously, I think Cecile
Richards apologized for the tone of that video. I think her apology was
exactly right. I think that the staffer, the tone was terribly wrong.”

Why wasn’t the abortion question asked at the October 13 debate?

Perhaps the pro-abortion media recognizes the disadvantage for
pro-abort
ion candidates? (For an overview of the National Right to Life
Advantage for Pro-life Candidates go here.) Perhaps they know that most Americans do not support abortion for any reason.
All of the Democratic candidates support a policy which allows abortion for any reason.
For National Right to Life’s downloadable flyer “Where Do the Candidates Stand on Life?” click here.

Are your friends unsure where the presidential candidates stand on life? If so, be sure to share it with them as well.
Look for updates in future National Right to Life News and National Right to Life News Today.

According
to China’s official news service run by the Communist government, China
is reportedly abolishing the draconian pro-abortion one child policy
that only allows families in urban areas to have one child and rural
families to have two children. The new policy will reportedly allow two
children per family.

Started in 1980, the policy, which is the most severe in the world,
has resulted in severe human rights abuses. Family planning officials
frequently jail couples who refuse to comply, sentence them to house
arrest or labor camps, revoke jobs or governmental support, use physical
harassment or violence and often target other family members.
There are more than 13 million abortions a year, or 1,500 an hour, in
China, according to government researchers. That’s thanks in large part
to the one-child policy — which encourages abortions and results in
forced abortions and sex-selection abortions.
However, according to multiple news reports, China has announced the policy is changing. As AP reports, based on China’s official news service:

Xinhua said on its microblog that the decision to allow
all couples to have two children was “to improve the balanced
development of population” and to deal with an aging population.
The decision does away with an unpopular policy that was long
considered one of the party’s most onerous intrusions into family life.
The decision was contained in a Communist Party communique that
followed a meeting of the party’s Central Committee on planning the
country’s economic and social development through 2020. In recent years,
it has been unusual for such plenary sessions to result in major
decisions. They generally focus on economic topics and there was no
indication that this one would take action on the one-child policy.
The decision announced Thursday removes all remaining restrictions limiting couples to only one child.

Before the announced policy change today, Congressman Chris Smith of
New Jersey, one of the leading pro-life and human rights advocates in
Congress, puts the one-child policy in perspective.
“In 1980 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party sent an
open letter to party members setting forth its plan to embark on a
national one-child policy,” Smith said. “What came out of that letter? A
cruel and inhumane policy, a human rights violation that is, in scope
and seriousness, the worst human rights abuse in the world today. No
other government policy anywhere else in the world systematically
punishes, abuses, and violates women so grossly as this.”
Smith said the policy has made it so brothers and sisters are illegal
and children are growing up in a society with no aunts and uncle
because the one-child policy has now been around for a generation.
The policy is unlike any other in the world in that it requires all
women to obtain a birth permit before becoming pregnant and children of
unwed mothers are subjected to abortions. And it monitors the
reproductive cycles of all women of childbearing age through a system of
mandatory, regular, and crudely invasive physical check-ups.
He says the policy has created an “atmosphere of fear” where anonymous pregnancy informants spy on citizens.
“The brave pregnant woman who refuses to give in is usually detained
and beaten – or, if she goes into hiding, her relatives are detained and
beaten. Families that succeed in hiding an “out-of-plan” pregnancy are
punished with fines up to ten times the average annual income,” he
explained.
Smith said the abortions have resulted in a policy of “gendercide”
where more than 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. This has created a
bachelor society of men who will be unable to marry and has given rise
to more crime, sex trafficking, prostitution, and other problems.
He said the policy has resulted in a sky-high suicide rate for Chinese women who face such a brutal and terrorizing regime.
Smith said those who don’t believe the one-child policy is resulting
in forced abortions need only look at the numerous media reports,
reports from Chinese people who have fled the country, and human rights
activists monitoring the situation.
“The violence of the one-child policy is absolutely ongoing. This
year there are reliable reports of large scale and violent abortion
enforcement campaigns in Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Zhejiang, and
Jiangxi provinces,” he said.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Pro-abortion Gloria Steinem: still crazy after all these years

By Dave Andrusko

Gloria Steinem being interviewed by Katie Couric.

After 50+ years of abortion advocacy, no one would expect Gloria
Steinem to suddenly see the light. She is as firm in her commitment to
abortion and you and I are to finding life-affirming solutions.
So I mention the “exclusive interview” she gave to Yahoo Global
Anchor Katie Couric for two reasons. In reverse order of significance…
First, her new book is titled “My Life on the Road.” In the
promotional blurb on Amazon, we read, “My Life on the Road is the
moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria’s growth and also the growth
of a revolutionary movement for equality—and the story of how
surprising encounters on the road shaped both.”
Living “on the road” is apparently a solo act: that “growth” included
aborting a child. Perhaps that’s why she “dedicates the book to the
doctor who helped her get an abortion in 1957.”
Second, the teaser quote
is the sentiment that baffles me to this day: “Every child has a right
to be born loved and wanted. And a woman who decides that this is not
the moment when she can provide that for a child is making, to me, a
profoundly moral decision.”
It is the ultimate self-exculpatory excuse. The child is better off
dead if not “born loved and wanted.” In short when a woman vacuums out
the life within her or has her baby torn limb from limb using metal
instruments she is really doing him or her a favor.
Some of the zanier breed of pro-abortion feminist would find this a
complete cop out, which, of course, it is. To them it is irrelevant–
literally beside the point–whether the child is wanted and/or loved.
Taking their baby’s life is an expression of autonomy, an exercise of
brute force over someone who is utterly defenseless, a rather stark
contradiction for a “feminist.” It will be done because it can be done.
Steinem never entertains the possibility that our capacity for love
can and will emerge when we hold that baby in our arms. And that,
whether the baby was “wanted” or not, she often becomes the very center
of our lives.

“Memorial for Unborn Children” comforts post-abortive women and men

By Dave AndruskoElsewhere
today we post about an interview Gloria Steinem gave to Yahoo Global
Anchor Katie Couric in which she insists to the former CBS News anchor that abortion is “a profoundly moral decision.” Indeed, we learn that Steinem dedicated her most recent book–My Life On The Road— “to John Sharpe, the doctor who helped her get an abortion in 1957.”
I thought of that interview when I read a post whose understanding of abortion is as far from Steinem’s as the east is from the west.
The headline to the story is “With a child’s touch, sculpture seeks
to comfort those who mourn abortion.” And where Steinem celebrates the
“liberating” power of abortion, polish sculptor Martin Hudacek
understands the need that so many post-women (and men) have for
forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation.
Several years ago we wrote about Hudacek’s “Memorial for Unborn
Children” and what an amazing impact the sculpture has had on so many
women. In a story published this week by the Catholic News Agency, we are updated about the piece that Hudacek hopes “will help to heal men and women suffering after an abortion.”
Hudacek, who lives in a small village in Poland, says the project was inspired by a friend.

“It all began when on my way back
home from my friend’s place who prays and meditates a lot, (and) he
told me I have to carve a statue” that depicts the effects of
post-abortion syndrome, “a big problem and there is no such statue
regarding this issue.”

Hudacek said that he was “touched
in such way that I wanted to make a monument for the unborn children,”
but he had no idea where to start. He asked people to pray.

“I was praying and many people
came to me and said I need a picture of forgiveness,” he said. As time
passed, the image became clearer and clearer in his mind: “it looked
like a crying mother and a child who forgives her.”

And that is what we see. A suffering post-abortive mother, her face buried in her hands.

She is approached by her aborted
baby, depicted in a young child’s transparent form. The child reaches up
to touch the woman’s head in a tender gesture of forgiveness and
healing.

Hudacek completed a third version of the “Memorial for Unborn
Children” statue two weeks ago. It is located inside a cemetery in
Wroclaw, Poland, According to CNA, it is seven feet tall.
We learn there is a significant (and necessary)addition: “it shows a
father alongside the grieving mother and their aborted child.”
Hudacek wants everyone to understand that “Memorial for Unborn
Children” is really not his work–he is merely the instrument–but God’s
and that only Jesus can forgive. But he said he hopes the sculpture can
provide “a small healing” for post-abortive women, who, after they look
at the sculpture, might be more likely to think about forgiveness . The
story ends with this beautiful conclusion:

“It is interesting to see my
statue on the internet or in many places being presented in diverse
ways,” Hudacek said, explaining that he can tell the sculpture is
bearing fruit in reports from around the world.

“I see it is a world issue, thus I am personally impressed and I am glad I can participate in God’s work,” he said.

By Dave AndruskoWe
are now into Video #11 in the ongoing undercover investigation of
Planned Parenthood and so-called Tissue Procurement Companies–the ones
that are the middlemen between the abortion clinics and the researchers
eager to experiment on intact baby body parts.
Yet even so when I watched the latest video released by the Center
for Medical Progress this morning I was still stunned by the way two
women–one from Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas at Austin, the other
from Whole Woman’s Health– talked about the bodies of aborted babies.
I shouldn’t by now–not after listening to many discussions about
using less “crunchy” abortion techniques and women on the verge of
delivering their babies (“Oh yeah, the fetus was already in the vaginal
canal whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out”), and much
more–but I am.
In the video, Amna Dermish, MD, is described as a 2nd-Trimester
Abortion Provider, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. In the
discussion with an actor posing as a Fetal Tissue Procurement Company
she is asked how many 20 week abortions her clinic does:

It varies, like last week I think
we only had 2, and I think this week we have 4 on this coming week we
have 4 on the schedule, plus I’ll be doing ultrasounds, so we might get
more.

Buyer: You might get more.

PP: Yeah, we usually have at
least 2, sometimes we’ll do 6 in a week, but again our second trimester
volume has been slowly increasing, they’re showing up later,

Dermish explains that on babies 18 weeks and older she uses laminaria
to soften and dilate the cervix. “But leaving them in for 24 hours, I
can usually get 3 to 4 centimeters of dilation, which usually allows me
to get, to extract it more intact.”
“It” refers to the baby’s body.
So the buyer asks what was the condition–the “intactness”– of the
“specimen.” (By way of explanation, a “breech presentation” means the
baby’s feet or bottom comes out first rather than the normal head
first–a “cephalic presentation.” “Calvarium” refers to the baby’s
skull.)

PP: It was trunk intact, so
usually what I do, if it’s a breech presentation, I’ll remove the
extremities first, the lower extremities, and then go for the spine and
sort of bring it down that way, and then—

Buyer: You said if that’s a breech presentation?

PP: If it’s a breech
presentation, yeah, yeah. And if it’s cephalic I’ll try and get the
cal[varium] first, but if I’m struggling getting the cal, usually it’s a
function of how good my dilation is, often times it’s hard to get
around the cal. Especially the 20 weekers are a lot harder versus the
18-weekers, so at that point I’ll switch to breech, so.

Buyer: Good. I was just curious what we might be working with.

PP: I always try and keep the trunk intact just by function of always trying to aim for the spine to bring it down.

Finally, the actor asks what does Dermish do when there is a request
for a fetal brain. She responds, “Yeah, I haven’t been able to do that
yet. The intact calvarium [skull].”
A second later, Dermish adds, “Well this will give me something to strive for.”
And then she laughs.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

This Abortionist Will Never Kill Babies Again After Selling Abortion Drugs to Non-Pregnant Women

Cheryl Sullenger

Oklahoma abortionist Naresh Patel
pled guilty on Friday to charges he committed fraud when he sold
abortion pills to three non-pregnant undercover officers after Operation
Rescue filed a complaint against his that resulted eventually in his
arrest in December, 2014.

Patel was ordered to serve 18 days in a private correctional facility, pay a $20,000 fine, and serve 10 years of probation.
Patel surrendered his medical license and can never practice medicine
again, according to his plea agreement. His abortion clinic has
permanently closed.
Patel must also pay court costs, $2,000 in restitution and a victim’s compensation assessment of $100.
“We are excited to announce that is reign of terror has now come to
an end because of our complaint that brought him to the attention of the
Attorney General’s office,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation
Rescue. “This predatory abortionist will never again be able to operate
an abortion clinic, exploit another woman, or kill another baby. We are
proud to have been a part of bringing his reign of terror to an end.”
Operation Rescue had filed complaints with the Attorney General’s
Office and the Oklahoma Medical Board against Patel in the spring of
2014 after discovering evidence of abortion abuses in trash from his
office supplied by a confidential informant. Cooperation between those
two agencies led to Patel’s arrest.
“Patel has managed to escape justice before, and this time, he must
be held accountable for his crimes,” said Operation Rescue President
Troy Newman. “His greedy exploitation of vulnerable women must come to
an end. If anyone belongs behind bars, it is Naresh Patel.”In 1993, Patel was charged with one count of “forcible oral sodomy” and one count of sexual battery after a patient alleged that he had sexually assaulted her on an examination table prior to an abortion. She thenrecorded two phone conversationswith him in which she alleged that he asked if she was angry about the assault and apologized for it.Three victims came forwardand told of their horrific encounters with Patel, but somehow the jury failed to convict him.
Patel was also previously disciplined by the Oklahoma Medical Board
for Unprofessional Conduct for “failing to maintain dispensing records
for dangerous drugs and keep complete and accurate records of purchase
and dispensing of controlled drugs” and for injuring a woman during a
botched abortion.
In 1993, Patel admitted that he dumped the remains of nearly 60
babies that had been aborted at his clinic in a field near Shawnee,
Oklahoma, and had attempted to burn them but only the plastic bags
around the remains caught on fire. The bodies were discovered by two
passers-by. Patel’s excuse that he could not find a service to take away
the remains lacked credibility. Because at that time there were no laws
in Oklahoma regarding the disposal of aborted baby remains, Patel was
never charged.
Patel was also recentlysued for sexual harassmentafter
an employee claimed that he repeatedly asked her for sexual favors. She
alleges he forced her to conduct grisly tasks at his abortion facility
after she refused her advances and that she quit after he attempted to
rape her at his home.Read Operation Rescue’s original Patel investigation report with a link to the complaint that brought this criminal to justice!

This Abortionist Will Never Kill Babies Again After Selling Abortion Drugs to Non-Pregnant Women

Cheryl Sullenger

Oklahoma abortionist Naresh Patel
pled guilty on Friday to charges he committed fraud when he sold
abortion pills to three non-pregnant undercover officers after Operation
Rescue filed a complaint against his that resulted eventually in his
arrest in December, 2014.

Patel was ordered to serve 18 days in a private correctional facility, pay a $20,000 fine, and serve 10 years of probation.
Patel surrendered his medical license and can never practice medicine
again, according to his plea agreement. His abortion clinic has
permanently closed.
Patel must also pay court costs, $2,000 in restitution and a victim’s compensation assessment of $100.
“We are excited to announce that is reign of terror has now come to
an end because of our complaint that brought him to the attention of the
Attorney General’s office,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation
Rescue. “This predatory abortionist will never again be able to operate
an abortion clinic, exploit another woman, or kill another baby. We are
proud to have been a part of bringing his reign of terror to an end.”
Operation Rescue had filed complaints with the Attorney General’s
Office and the Oklahoma Medical Board against Patel in the spring of
2014 after discovering evidence of abortion abuses in trash from his
office supplied by a confidential informant. Cooperation between those
two agencies led to Patel’s arrest.
“Patel has managed to escape justice before, and this time, he must
be held accountable for his crimes,” said Operation Rescue President
Troy Newman. “His greedy exploitation of vulnerable women must come to
an end. If anyone belongs behind bars, it is Naresh Patel.”In 1993, Patel was charged with one count of “forcible oral sodomy” and one count of sexual battery after a patient alleged that he had sexually assaulted her on an examination table prior to an abortion. She thenrecorded two phone conversationswith him in which she alleged that he asked if she was angry about the assault and apologized for it.Three victims came forwardand told of their horrific encounters with Patel, but somehow the jury failed to convict him.
Patel was also previously disciplined by the Oklahoma Medical Board
for Unprofessional Conduct for “failing to maintain dispensing records
for dangerous drugs and keep complete and accurate records of purchase
and dispensing of controlled drugs” and for injuring a woman during a
botched abortion.
In 1993, Patel admitted that he dumped the remains of nearly 60
babies that had been aborted at his clinic in a field near Shawnee,
Oklahoma, and had attempted to burn them but only the plastic bags
around the remains caught on fire. The bodies were discovered by two
passers-by. Patel’s excuse that he could not find a service to take away
the remains lacked credibility. Because at that time there were no laws
in Oklahoma regarding the disposal of aborted baby remains, Patel was
never charged.
Patel was also recentlysued for sexual harassmentafter
an employee claimed that he repeatedly asked her for sexual favors. She
alleges he forced her to conduct grisly tasks at his abortion facility
after she refused her advances and that she quit after he attempted to
rape her at his home.Read Operation Rescue’s original Patel investigation report with a link to the complaint that brought this criminal to justice!

Garbage disposal or incinerator? Abortion providers debate how to dispose of babies

According
to Renee Chelian, the owner of abortion facilities in Michigan, the
abortion industry has a fetal disposal problem. It just can’t figure out
how to get rid of its leftover baby parts.
In undercover videos presumably leaked by a Washington staffer to Got News,
the Center for Medical Progress team records the horrifying discussions
taking place in the abortion industry when abortionists, staff, and
clinic owners gather at a national conference. The videos show abortion
providers sharing ideas on how to dispose of dead babies.
Starting in July with the first CMP undercover video, we saw babies picked apart
for their organs in pie pans, and now we find out even more
stomach-churning information about what happens to the babies who aren’t
harvested.
As Live Action reported last
week, abortion providers believed to be attending the National Abortion
Federation (NAF) convention admitted that in Detroit, “many” of the
nearly 45 abortion facilities routinely flushed baby parts into garbage
disposals and out into the sewer system because it was cheap and legal,
according to an archaic law. (See video below starting at 25:10.)
Abortion clinic owner, Renee Chelian, tells the crowd that Michigan
has “some of the worst laws and the loosest laws in the country on
medical waste, ” allowing practically anyone to handle medical waste.
Upon investigation, Chelian found that funeral homes and crematoriums
charged $150 per patient. “So who was gonna pay for this?” she asks.

The garbage disposal was the completely
legal option, which made me sick to my stomach, because there were about
45 clinics in the Detroit metropolitan area, and many of them were
using garbage disposals, so I was busy contacting everybody that I
could, that, “You have to stop. This cannot be–if this cannot be on the
front page of the New York Times, you shouldn’t be doing it.
Any of you.” And they consistently showed me like a 40-year-old law in
Michigan that said pathological waste was fine to go in the sewer
system. I couldn’t really argue with them.”

So because flushing babies into the sewer system is technically
legal, it’s okay – at least to abortion industry workers where money is
the bottom line. The entire discussion over disposal has two common
denominators: cost and public relations. Nowhere do these workers
express concern for women traumatized by abortion or for the babies
themselves.
Instead, the goal is to seek out the cheapest and easiest way to get
rid of dead human baby parts. The funeral home option, Chelian says,
didn’t work out for a few reasons. For one, the funeral homes wanted her
to leave:

I started visiting funeral homes, who
ultimately started talking about how much a body weighs, before they
could figure out how much it was gonna cost, and then we had to go from
pounds to ounces, and they were like, “We don’t even know how to charge
for this.” And they showed me a body bag, and I was like, “Dude, we need
to go to like, a Tupperware container.” [audience laughter] In which
case, we started talking about the freezer jars we use, which really
freaked them out, because all the fetal tissue was mixed together, after
we do a POC (Product of Conception) check, and they were, they just
wanted me to leave.

And when a funeral home wants you to leave, it says a lot about the population you’re handling.

So abhorrent is the abortion business that even those licensed to
deal with the dead could not handle them. Jokes about babies in
Tupperware containers may float with a bunch of people who earn their
living off killing them, but even a mortician finds it despicable and
intolerable. If anything shows how out-of-mainstream the abortion
business is, it’s this comment.
Not to be deterred, Chelian considered, instead, opening a
crematorium to do her own disposals. She thought her clinics could
perhaps buy a plot in Detroit for incinerators and just burn up the
remains of the dead babies personally:

So we tried to figure out, if we tried to
put an incinerator in on our property, would the city let us? Or would
they just assume the abortion clinic was gonna be burning fetal tissue
and there’s no way in hell they would have given it to us. Were we gonna
have to go into inner-city Detroit and get a lot, and put an
incinerator there? …

Another fun thing, we could have a bunch
of clinics buy an incinerator, and then we could just go pick up for
each other, if we all got a license, I mean talk about working with the
competition. What kind of permits do you need? How do you keep an
incinerator? How do you clean it? …how big? How much? I mean, there’s a
difference between, do we have to do one D&E, or a whole jar of 1st
trimester patients?

I mean, I’m serious, there is, when you
look at incinerators, for cremation, the website descriptions are, small
cat, small dog, larger dog. So we were looking, trying to compare our
jars to larger animals you might incinerate. We don’t think we need one
big enough for a horse [audience laughter].

As we’ve seen for months now, these babies’ body parts can earn money
for abortion facilities when they sell to companies like Stem Express
and Advanced Biomedical Research, turning a profit from the bloodshed.
But once that’s done – or if a clinic isn’t connected to baby body part
harvesters – they have to somehow get rid of what’s left. Thus, their
brainstorming for new ideas on how burn or dispose of the remains of a
baby.

The abhorrent, despicable nature of the abortion business – so deeply
focused on death at all costs – has been revealed to a deeper degree
than ever with the inside footage from the NAF convention.
Of course, the NAF knew how their own words would be perceived, which
is why they sued to keep the footage from being released in the first
place. The fact that this full footage may have been leaked illegally by
a Washington staffer doesn’t make the information untrue, as some would
assert. In fact, these videos can’t even be subject to the abortion
industry’s favorite claim of “highly deceptive editing” since
the videos are raw footage.

The truth is that the abortion industry knows they are killing babies
for money, but their biggest concern is how to get rid of the
unnecessary parts of children while maximizing their own profit.
Sometimes that means dumping bodies down a garbage disposal and
feeding them into the city sewer system – ensuring that the city’s very
undercurrent is the innocent blood of babies.

More than ever Planned Parenthood is on the defensive

By Dave AndruskoEditor’s note. This editorial appears in the October digital edition of National Right to Life News at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsOct2015.pdf. Please be sure to share this, and the other stories and commentaries, using your social media contacts.My, how things can change, how life (and the fate of the purveyors of death) can turn on a dime.
You recall PPFA President Cecile Richards’ September 29 testimony
before the House Oversight Committee which extended almost five hours . While we punctured the myths and bogus analogies and feigned ignorance, plenty of media outlets tripped over their tongues in panting admiration for Richards.

If you believed their stories, which could have come off the PPFA
website, Richards so carried the day that the only question remaining
was would the House Oversight Committee have the good sense to pack up
its bags.
But that was then….
Since that performance (and Richards was slick),
PPFA’s president, who makes over a half-million dollars a year, decided
that the largest abortion provider in the world would no longer accept
reimbursement for the fetal tissue (a term which includes whole body
parts) it provides to medical researchers.
Not you understand that Planned Parenthood was operating from a
position of weakness or was conceding by its change in policy that it
had done anything wrong. No, not at all, we were assured.
In her letter to the NIH, Richards doubled down on her claims that
PPFA “adheres to the highest legal, medical, and ethical standards” as
it scavenges tissue and body parts from aborted babies.
Okay, then why the change?

“[I]n order to completely debunk the disingenuous argument that our
opponents have been using.” Once that “smokescreen” is removed, Richards
wrote, PPFA will be able to push “forward with our important work on
behalf of millions of women, men, and young people.”
Media outlets dutifully parroted the line that this was a brilliant
stroke which would put PPFA (so to speak) on the high moral ground. Of
course, it did nothing of the sort.

PPFA will still harvest organs out of the goodness
of its institutional heart, supplying a “service” that women want–aka
“preserving the ability of our patients to donate tissue.”
Of course that is hokum as well. As we have written before, look at
the consent form and listen to what various PPFA officials said on the
videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.
Women aren’t beating the walls down to “donate” their baby’s remains.
They are at their most vulnerable and the staff preys on that weakness
to convince them that their baby’s organs can cure everything from
Alzheimer’s to the common cold.

Also, as we reported in NRL News Today, while Richards keeps talking about how few PPFA clinics are currently involved, at least prior to the videos, affiliates were being given the green light to join in.

All this is taking place while carefully constructed myths are being exposed, one by one. As we have written, even the Washington Post recognizes that PPFA’s assertion that “Three percent of all Planned Parenthood health services are abortion services” is “misleading.”
PPFA’s claim was given “three Pinocchios.
”Pinocchios refer to how deceptive an assertion is, with four
Pinocchios representing the highest degree of distortion. Three
Pinocchios means (according to the Post) that a statement has “ Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”
Likewise on Richards’ previous assertion that PPFA provided
mammograms (which more recently she admitted was not the case). That
doesn’t stop supporters from recycling the myth that PPFA “provides”
mammograms.
In explaining how this also received Three Pinocchios, Erin Aitcheson wrote that the Post factchecker

Ye Hee Lee suggested using a more
“accurate term” such as access. All together now, “…women have ‘access’
to mammograms via Planned Parenthood.” Ye Hee Lee admitted, though,
that “access” is still “slippery language.”

What’s more, Ye Hee Lee admitted
that mammograms aren’t even a core service that Planned Parenthood
provides [BTW, abortion is a “core” service]. “So, when people talk
about Planned Parenthood clients who need mammography referrals the
most,” she wrote, “they are referring to a small percentage of total
patients.”

So only a fraction of Planned Parenthood’s clientele need the mammograms it doesn’t provide. Got it.

Because of the slippery language of “access.” Planned Parenthood supporters were awarded three Pinocchios.

On top of all this there is (from their perspective) the worrisome
declining support for PPFA, as measured by public opinion polls. A NBC
News–Wall Street Journal poll in late September found that PPFA is viewed favorably by 47% of Americans and unfavorably by 31%.
As National Review Online’s Ramesh Ponnuru reminds us, “In
1989, Gallup found that 82 percent of Americans had a favorable
impression” of Planned Parenthood. That is the benchmark against which
all recent numbers can be measured.
As Carol Tobias notes in her President’s column on page three,

Are Planned Parenthood affiliates
making money from the sale of body parts from these babies? Are they
manipulating the abortion procedure so as to keep the baby’s body in
better condition for harvesting organs and tissue? Are they getting
“consent” from the women whose babies are being killed and harvested for
parts? Several congressional committees are investigating these
questions and more. I look forward to their official findings.

There is all this, and much more to come. Far from “turning the
corner” or “turning the tables,” PPFA is in more hot water than ever
before.

The good and the bad of “The Good Wife” episode on physician-assisted suicide

By Dave Andrusko

Diane Lockhart and Irving Carver, characters on “The Good Wife.”

First, the confession. I haven’t watched “The Good Wife” (it’s in its
seventh season) this year and just stumbled across Episode Four last
night. Although the show often parrots the anti-life line, on occasion
the pro-life perspective can be presented in a very thoughtful way,
sometimes downright brilliantly.
Like always, the show operated on multiple levels with rings inside
of rings inside of rings. You really do need a scorecard to keep the
actors and the plot lines straight. (For sake of brevity I will not add
the real names of the characters.)
Forgive me for coming late, but there is a wrongful death case –
brought by the parents of a young woman with cancer who committed
suicide with the “assistance” of two Oregon physicians– which overlaps
with vice-presidential ambitions of the husband (Peter Florrick) of “The
Good Wife”–attorney Alicia Florrick. Peter, who is the governor of
Illinois, is being lobbied to veto an imminent Physician-Assisted
suicide bill in his state.
Okay. Why do I bother to bring up last night’s episode? For two reasons, one good and one not so good.
“The Good Wife” is always adding (and subtracting) characters. A new
one this year is attorney Irving Carver. He comes to Diane Lockhart,
another attorney in the television show, is passionately pro-abortion to
ask her to represent the parents.
For reasons too complicated to get into, Diane eventually agrees to
represent the parents in this case even though assisted suicide to Diane
is but another example of “choice.”
But the debate back and forth between Irving and Diane is terrific.
Diane’s bag on one-liners is ripped from the pro-abortion script (but
offered with passion) while Irving’s thoughtful, low-key rebuttal offers
a synopsis not of what might happen once the assisted suicide genii is
let out of the bottle, but what already has happened. Diane’s response–that the United States isn’t Belgium–is weak.
Irving reminds us of the price that the medical profession pays when
it allows itself to get into the death-dealing business. We also see
glimpses of the devastating societal-wide impact when we make death a
“solution” to a myriad of problems.
The bad part is reducing the objections of Grace (Peter and Alicia’s
daughter) to physician-assisted suicide to youthful idealism, hint, hint
religion. But even as I type these words, I’m having second thoughts.
Sure Peter’s campaign manager Ruth treats her as just another chess
piece to move around the board, but she does so to Peter’s mother as
well. (Coming late I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m guessing since
she is older, Peter’s mother will be portrayed as “wiser” and thus agree
assisted suicide is a “rights” issue.)
The episode with Diane in court shows her considerable skills at
work. The husband of the woman who committed assisted suicide is not the
paragon of virtue (shades of Terri Schiavo). However it ends (at least
for this episode) with what is suppose to be a huge setback for Diane
and her clients. More next week.
The bad guys always get the majority of the good lines. But to see
the case for life presented with two wings–adult respect for the
slippery slope implications of assisted suicide and the intrinsic
adolescent respect for vulnerable life–was welcomed indeed.

Host John Dickerson asked the
frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination, “Do you support a
federal limit on abortion at any stage of pregnancy?”

I watched her feint, duck, avoid
the question, and filibuster. Conclusion? No, Clinton doesn’t believe in
placing any limitation, whether “federal” or otherwise, on the
unfettered right to abort at any time or any reason.

Well the Florida Times Union’s Carole Fader has fact-checked
on a specific part of Clinton’s meandering answer: “Did Hillary Clinton
say late-term abortions ‘are because of medical necessity’”?
Here’s the setting, as described by Fader, the Clinton campaign’s repositioning of her answer, and Fader’s tentative conclusion:

Clinton answered that this was a
painful question, then went on to discuss the medical need for late-term
abortions, FactCheck.org reported.

Clinton responded: “I think that
the kind of late-term abortions that take place are because of medical
necessity. And, therefore, I would hate to see the government
interfering with that decision.”

When FactCheck.org asked her
campaign about her statement, a spokesman said that she meant that many
late-term abortions — not all or even most — are because of medical
reasons.

But her statement sounded as if
most, if not all, late-term abortions are medically necessary. And the
available evidence does not support that, FactCheck.org found.

Here are just a few of many considerations. (You can read the complete analysis at here.)
First, by way of preface, do you think Clinton has ever given an answer on “late-term abortions” that did not
have the same kind of sweeping language? I cannot answer that
definitely, but my strong suspicion is that Clinton has faithfully hued
to the line that suggests that virtually all “late-term” abortions are
performed because of “medical necessity.” This presumably refers (as
Fader suggests) to “either a severe fetal anomaly or a threat to the
life of the mother.”
But as NRLC has demonstrated, this is not true. Any guesses if
Clinton will go out of her way to “clarify” her comment to Dickerson?

Second, Fader goes to a pro-abortion source for an answer to why
women have late-term abortions–“the Guttmacher Institute’s peer-reviewed
journal, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.”

She notes that a study published there in 2013 concluded that “[i]n
many ways, women who had later abortions [after 20 weeks] were similar
to those who obtained first-trimester procedures.” (Which have to do
with such considerations as finances, stability of the relationship with
the father, compounded, in this case, by an extended denial that she is
pregnant.)
Fader says that while the study “did not include women who sought
later-term abortions due to fetal anomaly or maternal life
endangerment,” the study “did at least illustrate that there are women
getting abortions after 20 weeks who do so for non-medical reasons.”
Third, Fader questioned one of the authors of that paper–Prof. Diana
Greene Foster, who responded by email. Foster works at what NRLC’s Dr.
Randall K. O’Bannon calls “the nation’s abortion training academy”–the
University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global
Reproductive Health–and would be loathe to admit the real reasons for
late-term abortion. Fader writes that Foster

told FactCheck.org in an email
that “[t]here aren’t good data on how often later abortions are for
medical reasons.” She said based on limited research and discussions
with researchers in the field that abortions for fetal anomaly “make up a
small minority of later abortions,” and that those for life
endangerment are even harder to characterize.

Her “explanation” for the latter was these women would be treated in
hospitals, not abortion clinics, making the numbers “harder to obtain.”
So what does Fader conclude? “No hard numbers back up Clinton’s
comment that late-term abortions ‘are because of medical necessity.’”
A thought. If you read any of the four or five stories I wrote based
on interviews given by abortionist Susan Robinson (one of a handful of
abortionists who publicly admit to performing abortions 30 weeks and
later), it’s clear that (a) the “criteria” for abortion this late in
pregnancy is very ambiguous; (b) there is a considerable “margin of
error” in dating babies this advanced; and (c) “Some are having their
first abortion, some are having their second or third. You can’t categorise them.” [See, for example, here and here.]
Which brings you full circle to the conclusion drawn by Foster et
al.: “[i]n many ways, women who had later abortions [over 20 weeks] were
similar to those who obtained first-trimester procedures.”Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, either go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha